Director of Defence Information, Major-General John Enenche, told
Channels Television that it became necessary to oversee social media anti-government and anti-military became necessary in the light of troubling
activities and misinformation capable of jeopardizing the unity of the
country.
His comments come less than 48 hours after President
Muhammadu Buhari said in his national broadcast that some of the
discussion on social media in his absence crossed the line and left him
distressed.
For Major General Enenche, the social media has
always been a challenge all over the world and for the military, it is
no different.
“It is a double-edged sword and we are also having a
bit of it,” he said when he appeared on Channels Television’s News At
10, hours after President Buhari met with service chiefs and ordered
them to strengthen their operations.
“Imagine when the President
came back and addressed the nation, not up to 30 minutes later, a fake
speech of the Commander-In-Chief was being circulated in order to do
what? To derail the people. If you are not very sharp and if you didn’t
listen to the speech or you don’t have a copy of it like I had it almost
immediately, you wouldn’t know. So, looking at it from that
perspective, it is a challenge everywhere.”
Having observed
the possibility that the social media can be misused the military has
taken steps to address that. One of such steps is the establishment of
strategic media centres.
“What are we doing? In the military, we
are now taking on it more seriously than ever. We have our strategic
media centres that monitor the social media to be able to sieve out and
react to all the ones that will be anti-government, be anti-military,
(and) be anti-security,” the military chief continued.
“We tackle
them appropriately with appropriate responses. Ahead of that, we are
also proactive. We have measures in place, scientific measures to be
able to sieve this information and also to get the public and let them
know that some of this information they are getting is not genuine are
not true and their objective is an anti-corporate existence of this
country.”
There has been a rise in attacks by Boko Haram
terrorists and it is one of the things the President advised the service
chiefs to check. While the military intends to do just that, Major
General Enenche said what they terrorists are doing is not surprising.
He
said, “Like I have said before, it is not unexpected being that they
have been degraded, decimated and really busted at camp zero and other
cities there through the air bombardment and raids by members of the
military, particularly the army. So you will see them spreading out like
ants that have been busted from an anthill.”
According to him,
the terrorists have benefitted in their attacks from the unending
collaboration by insiders and sympathisers among the residents in the
North East.
“However, I want to assure the general public and
Nigerians that measures are in place to begin to take on them and begin
to take them out. However highly placed anyone is or any insider or
collaborator is, we are on top of the situation and we are beginning to
get our information to begin to handle them appropriately,” he said.
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